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Morphological Misfits and the Architecture of Development

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Macroevolution

Part of the book series: Interdisciplinary Evolution Research ((IDER,volume 2))

Abstract

Morphological misfits can be defined as a miscellaneous class of numerically marginal, often lately discovered taxa, deviating in one or more dramatic aspects from the structural organization of their closest relatives. Morphological misfits are a widely diverse set of taxa which according to their anatomical, ontogenetic and phylogenetic nature may offer the opportunity for a multiplicity of case studies in evolutionary developmental biology. Anatomically, there are modular misfits such as the paussinae beetles, with their extravagant antennae borne on a quite usual beetle body, and systemic misfits such as Wolffia among the flowering plants, reduced to a minute blob of green matter, and the also bloblike parasitic crustacean Sacculina among the animals. The former, but not the latter, are suggestive of developmental modularity. Ontogenetically, there are one-phase only misfits, such as blepharicerid midges (aberrant larvae but conventional midge-shaped adults), and whole-life-cycle misfits such as cycliophorans. The former, but not the latter, would suggest an evolutionary independence of developmental stages. Some misfits have diverged recently from their morphologically conservative closest relatives (e.g. the duckweeds (Lemnoideae) from conventional Araceae), while others, such as chaetognaths and Welwitschia, are the sole members of lineages which diverged very deeply in time from their closest known or putative relatives. The former, but not the latter, can provide obvious opportunities for investigating character evolvability.

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Acknowledgments

I am very grateful to Emanuele Serrelli for kindly inviting me to contribute to this volume and to Wallace Arthur for his sensible suggestions on my MS.

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  1. Department of Biology, University of Padua, Padua, Italy

    Alessandro Minelli

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Correspondence to Alessandro Minelli .

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  1. Department of Human Sciences U6, 4th floor, University of Milano Bicocca "Riccardo Massa", Milano, Italy

    Emanuele Serrelli

  2. Centre for Philosophy of Science Campo Grande, Edifício C4, University of Lisbon AppEEL, Lisbon, Portugal

    Nathalie Gontier

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Minelli, A. (2015). Morphological Misfits and the Architecture of Development. In: Serrelli, E., Gontier, N. (eds) Macroevolution. Interdisciplinary Evolution Research, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15045-1_10

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